The president’s lawyers must wake up every morning wondering if they’re in the throes of a mescaline fever dream. Which altered reality will they have to deal with today? The legal ground melts out from under them and scary hallucinations swirl around mutating versions of the boss: the Donald Trump who changes his story more often than his underwear and the one who tosses away members of his legal team like used Kleenex.

President Donald Trump has failed at many endeavors: casinos, airlines, universities, steaks, wine, vodka, board games, two marriages, armed forces physicals, White House Communications Department staffing, convincing foreign countries to build boundary structures. But the one thing he did excel at was reality television. The man has a real genius for pretending to be real.

In a speech this week to the Organization of American States, Vice President Mike Pence issued the standard, obligatory denunciation of the communist regime in Cuba, which the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA) have targeted for regime change ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959. Pence stated: